Spotlight: PL strikers of the 1990's

golden_blunder

David Hirst
Sir Alex Ferguson allegedly tried to sign him 6 times, and why not? At his peak, prior to career ending injuries, Hirst was considered the most promising English striker around. Indeed he was spoken off as Gary Linekers replacement for the National team, ahead of a young Alan Shearer.
Hirst had it all, left foot, right foot, good in the air, strong, quick and could score long range goals equally as well as close range goals. He once held the record for the fastest recorded shot at 114mph, when he struck the Arsenal bar in a match in 1996. Sadly, he retired from the game in January 2000 at the young age of 32. Who knows what he could have achieved were it not for injuries.

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Dalian Atkinson
Perhaps best known for his time at Villa from 1991-1995, Atkinson was a real crowd pleaser. He was a player who could take the ball and run at the opposition. In fact, a brilliant solo goal he scored against Wimbledon on 3 October 1992, won him the Match of the Day, Goal of the Season accolade. He was also notable for the match winning goal he scored for Villa versus Manchester United in the League Cup Final in the 1994 match. Atkinson was a crucial player in Aston Villa’s run to 2nd place in his first season with the club. Formed notable partnerships with Dean Saunders during his time at Villa and with David Hirst during his time at Sheff Wednesday.

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Matt LeTissier
Probably the best forward/attacking midfielder never to have played for a big 4 team. LeTissier was a genius, delighting Southampton fans for over a decade. One of the first 6 players to reach 100 goals in the Premier League, LeTissier was voted PFA Player of the Year in 1990. Some fans thought, his slow style was lazy, but the pure quality of his play and goals was admired by many fans and players alike. In 2010, Barcelona’s Xavi remarked “His talent was simply out of the norm. He could simply dribble past seven or eight players but without speed - he just walked past them. For me he was sensational"

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stubie1234

Dion Dublin

After a 2 year spell at United came a £2m move to Coventry in 1994. Finally getting regular first team Football in the Premier League was to become beneficial to both Dublin & Coventry as Dublin scored 62 league goals in 145 games for a struggling side in a 4 year spell, he even earned a call up to the England side in 1998 due to his form.



Also remembered for this clever goal

Annihilate Now!

Efan Ekoku

A 1990's striker in the fullest sense - with his best and only top flight years coming between 1993 and 1999, first for Nowrich City, and then more famously for Wimbledon. His time at Norwich shouldn't be relegated to an after-thought however, in which he assisted their title push in the 93-94 season by scoring 16 goals in 32 games, and also scoring their first ever goal in European compeition against Vitesse in the Uefa Cup. Enough of that though, as Wimbledon came calling after one season and he would go on to become an integral part of the 90's "Crazy Gang" ... linking up with other 90's legends Dean Holdsworth and scoring 37 goals over 5 seasons.

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Sparky_Hughes

Tony Yeboah

Anthony "Tony" Yeboah (born 6 June 1966 in Kumasi) is a Ghanaian former professional footballer who played as striker from 1981 to 2003.

Tony Famously had a thigh measurement of over 1m.

He is most noted for his time at European clubs 1. FC Saarbrücken, Eintracht Frankfurt, Leeds United and Hamburger SV during the 1990s
Yeboah joined English club Leeds United from Eintracht Frankfurt for a £3.4 million price tag at the start of 1995. As well as his wonder-goals of the season against Liverpool and Wimbledon, a hat-trick versus AS Monaco in the UEFA Cup was one of the high points of his Leeds career. Yeboah often cited his good form and prowess while at Leeds was down to his love for Yorkshire Pudding. A video was released named ‘Yeboah – Shoot to Kill’ while he was at Leeds.

Yeboah scored a total of 33 goals for Leeds United in 62 appearances, and is still revered as a cult hero for the Yorkshire club due to a series of memorable goals he scored. His volley against Liverpool and his strike versus Wimbledon in the 1995–96 season were amongst his notable goals and he was a regular feature in Goal of the Month in the Premiership at a time when the Georgian midfielder Georgi Kinkladze of Manchester City F.C. and Matt Le Tissier of Southampton F.C. also gained a reputation for scoring world class goals in the competition. The goal against Wimbledon was also awarded Goal of the Season in 1995–96. While at Leeds, the speed of one of his shots was unofficially measured at 96 mph, making his shots faster than Leeds legend Peter Lorimer. In his first season (1995–96) at Elland Road he was voted as the club's first-ever non-British Player of the Year.[2] He also scored three hat-tricks for Leeds

Sparky_Hughes

Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink

Leeds manager George Graham signed Hasselbaink in the summer of 1997 for a fee in the region of £2million.[3] After scoring on his Premier League debut against Arsenal at Elland Road, Hasselbaink finished his first season in English football with 16 league goals.[4] The following season, Hasselbaink's 18 goals in 36 appearances made him joint winner of the Premiership golden boot as Leeds finished 4th in the league under David O'Leary.[5]

Despite only playing two seasons for Leeds, Hasselbaink has been cited as one of the club's greatest players.[

Brwned

My favourite non-United Premier League goal.

Sparky_Hughes

Still makes me go how the fuck did he do that! all these years later.

Sparky_Hughes

Chris Sutton

In the autumn of 1993, he was part of the Norwich side which famously eliminated Bayern Munich from the UEFA Cup.

Sutton became the most expensive player in English football in July 1994, when he was transferred from Norwich City to Blackburn Rovers for £5 million. In his first season at Ewood Park he developed a strong partnership (known as 'SAS') with Alan Shearer (who scored 34 times that season) and scored fifteen Premier League goals to help secure the club's first league title since 1914.

A succession of injuries, combined with a loss of form, saw him make just 13 Premier League appearances during 1995–96 and fail to score a single league goal. Shearer's regular strike partner that season was Mike Newell, but at the end of the season both Shearer and Newell left the club, leaving Sutton and Kevin Gallacher as Blackburn's only major strikers.

He regained his form over the next three seasons and was the joint highest goalscorer in the Premier League in 1997–98, scoring 18 times.


Although Sutton's 18 goals helped Blackburn finish sixth and qualify for the UEFA Cup in 1998, he managed just 17 league games and 3 goals the following season as they were relegated from the Premier League at the end of 1998–99, just four years after being crowned champions. His absences were the result of a series of injuries. Most notably, he was absent for the penultimate game of the season on 12 May 1999, which Blackburn had to win to keep their survival hopes alive. They could only manage a goalless draw at home to Manchester United, who went on to win the title four days later.

Sutton was sold to Chelsea for £10 million after Blackburn's relegation. His time at Stamford Bridge proved an unhappy one, as he struggled both to live up to the price tag and to adapt to Chelsea's style of play, scoring just one league goal in a 5–0 win against Manchester United in 29 appearances, and three goals in total, the other two coming against Skonto Riga in a Champions League qualifier and Hull City in the FA Cup. He failed to even make the bench for the club's FA Cup Final win against Aston Villa, and was sold to Scottish Premier League side Celtic for £6 million in the summer of 2000.